Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia

World Association for Triple Helix and Future Strategy Studies (세계트리플헬릭스미래전략학회)
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Examining China's Internet Policies through a Bibliometric Approach

  • Published : 2018.12.31
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Abstract

In order to understand China's internet governance, this paper examined 1,931 Internet policies of China by bibliometric techniques. Specifically, the bibliometric techniques include simple document counting, co-word analysis, collaboration network analysis and citation analysis. The findings include: (1) China's Internet legislations mainly emphasized e-commerce and Internet governance, and, to some extent, neglected personal data protection; (2) China's Internet is under intensive multiple regulatory controls by central government. A large number of government agencies are involved in Internet policy-making. The Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Information Leading Group of the State Council, enforced fewer policy documents, but occupy higher positions in the Internet governance hierarchy; (3) China's Internet legislation system is primarily composed of industry-specific administrative rules, rather than laws or administrative regulations. Nevertheless, laws and administrative regulations received significantly more citations owing to their superior force. This paper also discussed current gaps in China's internet governance and how the country's internet policies are situated in the broader global context.

Keywords

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Figure 2 Semi-structured text of an exemplar internet policy of China

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Figure 3 Growth of China’s Internet policies

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Figure 4 Three popular topics of China’s Internet policies derived by co-word analysis of 33 high-frequency keywords in China’s internet policies

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Figure 5 Collaboration network of the core agencies

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Figure 1 The structure of the Central governance agencies of internet in China

Table 2. Principal agencies of China’s internet policies

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Table 3. 15 highly cited Internet polices

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Figure 6 Internet policy citation network (each highly cited policy is labelled in a format: ranking-year-citations

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